Time To Throw Some Stones...

What the hell is wrong with Australian television?

And no, I’m not talking about the way the programmers treat us like idiots, hiding the good stuff way past our bed time. Or putting off shows until the DVD has been released, both crimes they should pay dearly for. I’m talking about our local content. Crime drama, lifestyle or non-crime drama seem to be the only things we make of note. But only our comedies are for a large part quite brilliant, yet hounded by cretins telling us what comedy is “supposed” to be.

Imagine then my surprise that the killjoys who out and out crucified the Chaser and broke the Glasshouse sitting on their hands for Good News Week on Channel Ten because Ricki-Lee sings ‘Call Me’ or something similar to offset Mikey Robbins and the eternal filth imp Paul McDermott. See the bile rise in my throat when the same network invite Andrew Bolt on to The 7PM Project to present an ‘informed view’, when in fact he is part of what Hunter S. Thompson describes as the Fourth Reich. Can you dig this? I can’t.

I was ten when topical comedy set me aflame. Back in the day, I would watch Good News Week on a Friday night, and spend the next week guessing what stories they’d talk about on the next show (weird yes, but catnip to me). Mind you, 1998 it was revelation time for me. The Simpsons were at their legendary creative peak, The Micallef Program was starting out, and not long from then we discovered South Park and the world became a better place. But topical comedy, not quite satire, was –and still is- my ‘thing’. It was my dream to panel on Good News Week. Be good enough to write jokes for them. I breathed that stuff.

So imagine the heartbreak caused in 2000 when Ten not only axed the show after buying it away from the ABC, but doing so to dwindling numbers. I taped the final show then proceeded to wear the tape thin. It was a troubling time for me, as adolescence was a year away, and I still had nothing to fill that void. Comedy, you see, has been my way of compensating for being uninteresting and so beautiful that people assume I’ll never speak to them (I believe).

For this reason, I love the Glasshouse. It was the perfect continuation of the sort of humour that I found so exhilarating. The three main hosts were (at the time) three of the best up and coming comics in our country with a crack team of writers behind them and a ratio of knowledgeable types to funny types that the 7PM Project owes them for. It was childish at times. It was silly. It was nothing more than five people talking for a half an hour, usually making jokes about the government of the day, which became its undoing. But ultimately, our culture needed it.

Humour is the great leveller. It can transform a monster into a joke, and a joke into a unifying belief. History will speak of the leaders we have had in their factual connotations, but people will listen to the jokes about them before taking any facts into account. And when you laugh at the monsters they become less scary. And heaven only knows we have monsters.

So imagine the heartbreak caused in 2006 when the Howard Government broke it. Complaints to the effect that the show “lacked bipartisanship” in making many jokes about the government of the day rather than focus on the opposition. This leads me to two conclusions about the people who did this with the clarity of hindsight that the same people complained about the Chaser: 1) They were plants for a scared and upset government or 2) These individuals are constantly upset and will in fact die miserable.
That final show proved the pure potential this show had, with Kochie coming out with RELEVANT and INTERESTING discussion as a rare highlight of his career. The subsequent DVD is one I will watch every so often to reminding myself of the good times, but my heart yearns for a resolution…

I say it often. Loudly when I do, and without a trace of guilt or shame: “Dear Auntie, Bring Back The Glasshouse. And Bring It Back RIGHT NOW.” I’m an adult now, and Good News Week, my childhood benchmark of Australia’s premiere topical humour now answers to advertisers. It now plugs things openly on a commercial network so of course there are things it cannot say. It’s still good, don’t get me wrong.

But I came of age with the Glasshouse giving me a platform to care about the world and when it swerved from humour to serious issues, it did so with a humility and compassion you could not put in GNW for the simple fact that it’s divides the conservative thinker against the people who are right.

Now is a great time to bring it back, now is always the best time to bring it back. Maybe not with the same people. But get new folks in. Easy fixed.

And for those of you who say “Well why don’t you go and do it? You love it so much, why not try it yourself?” Okay. I’ll just need about eight staff writers, 2-4 more hosts, some learned guests and the rights to the Mock the Week format over in Britain. Oh and a camera or three and editing equipment. And if the ABC don’t like it, YOUTUBE BABY. See, that’s the thing about loving something so dearly, you’ll want to take it somewhere else. But where I take it may not be the best place.

So to all you news freaks and comedy nerds who loved this show as much as I did, I say: We’re never alone. We’ll always have that fire burning. And to the ABC: DO SOMETHING RIGHT FOR ONCE.